One home, but not every tool shown at once. Fit decides what appears in each space.
Chapter 04 · Pillars · Integrated
Unification
Stop stitching tools together. Move into one home.
Are our people and tools in one place?
01 · What breaks without it
Every tool switch costs context.
Chat in one app, events in another, dues in a third, files in a fourth. Each was a reasonable choice on its own. Together they're a patchwork: members juggle a handful of logins, leaders copy the same information between systems, and decisions made in one tool never reach the people in another.
Connecting the apps doesn't fix it. Integrations pass data around, but the experience still feels like five apps, because it is.
There's no such thing as a free app. A $0 tool still gets paid: with your organization's data, which lives on someone else's terms (03Data); with leader hours spent copying between systems; and with members who tune out or miss what matters because it lives somewhere else (07Feel). As you use the calculator below, count those costs too.
How many apps are you juggling?
Select the tools your organization uses today to see what one home could replace.
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02 · What good looks like
One home, built in, not bolted on.
Healthy groups run their life from one place: conversations, meetings, events, files, giving and the member directory, all sharing the same members, the same permissions and the same history. Moving from a conversation to a meeting to a payment is a change of mode, not a change of app.
- One loginMembers sign in once to everything the group does.
- One member listEveryone, their roles and their permissions, in one place.
- One historyA decision, the meeting it came from and the file it produced stay connected.
- Native, not stitchedCore tools are built in. Outside connections, such as payment processing, are the exception, not the glue.
One hub for each group
The home has a name: the hub. Every group has one, and everything else lives inside it: ongoing spaces for its main areas, smaller rooms inside them, and meetups that come and go. In organizations with local chapters, the national organization, each region and each chapter each have their own hub, connected so that what matters can move between them (06Flow).
People are part of unification
Unification isn't only about tools. It's leaders, committees and members working from the same picture. That's why clear owners for each outcome (01Culture) and one shared scoreboard (08Intelligence) matter as much as one login.
One home doesn't mean everything on every screen. Unification brings everything under one roof; 05Fit decides what shows up in each space.
03 · How BigTopa delivers it
The core tools, together.
- StreamConversations and announcements, threaded, with reactions and rich media.
- MeetupsInstant calls, scheduled meetings, webinars and broadcasts, without a separate video app.
- Shelves and blogsFiles and posts that live alongside the conversations they came from.
- Direct messagesOne-on-one and small-group conversations in the same place as everything else.
- Events and ticketingRSVPs, tickets and capacity for programs and galas.
- One checkoutDues, donations, tickets and products in one place, with no platform cut on member revenue. Standard payment processing fees apply.
- Marketing toolsEmail, announcements and event pages that reach the right members.
04 · Ask yourself
Questions for your leadership team.
- How many apps does a member need to stay fully involved in a typical month?
- How many logins does a new leader inherit?
- Where does a decision made in a meeting get recorded, and who sees it?
- What do leaders copy by hand from one tool to another?
- Which app would members miss least if it disappeared tomorrow?
05 · One signal to watch
Apps it takes to run a month.
Count the separate apps members and leaders need in a typical month: chat, meetings, events, payments, files and email. Watch it fall. Every app removed is one fewer login and one fewer place for things to get lost.
Connected elements
Unification doesn't stand alone.
With everything in one home, activity flows naturally from rooms to spaces to the hub, and from hub to hub across the organization.
Unifying people means clear owners for each outcome, not just one login.